


knowing it well; we belong in the sea

by itsquietcompany



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M, Mentions of past suicide, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 15:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19704211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsquietcompany/pseuds/itsquietcompany
Summary: All his life, Armitage Hux has had a morbid longing for the sea, and it is only when he meets a mysterious girl that he finds out why.





	knowing it well; we belong in the sea

Armitage Hux is late. He’s left his office at his father’s company minutes ago, thrown on a tuxedo and a bowtie, and is now rushing to a gala dinner, hosted by Hux senior as well. Sometimes he feels that is what his whole life consists of: the shipping company he would inherit from his father one day.

He’d rather not go to this event. He’s tired after a twelve hour day, and he can’t stand talking to his father’s business friends and their boring partners. Nearby Armitage can hear the ocean rumbling and he thinks he can even make out seals on the cliffs, but his eyes might betray him there. It’s getting dark already. He sighs and hurries up.

The restaurant is directly by the sea; it’s too cold yet to sit on the wooden terrace and have the waves provide background music for the dinner, so the party is gathered in the hall that has glass panels on three sides.

The room is fairly dark, only the stage is lit. The orator is in the middle of her speech as it seems, and the guests are already seated in groups of six to eight people on each table. Of course his intended place is the farthest away from the door, so he has to make his way as quietly and inconspicuously as possible through the crowd. Easier said than done: Armitage is tall and thin, in a gangly, inelegant way. He tries for a better posture but he’s terribly clumsy sometimes, keeps running into things and people, and his way of walking is unbalanced, as if he were constantly on a ship’s deck.

So he takes a deep breath to calm himself from the sprint and begins to walk, choosing the long way along the wall to attract as little as attention as possible. Halfway through the room the tell-tale whisper of a heavy piece of cloth sliding to the floor has him stop dead. Of course he has managed to knock something down.

“I’m so sorry”, he murmurs, turning around.

He crouches down and his fingers brush the soft material. It must be a genuine pelt, nothing artificial could quite match its cold and smooth surface. Hastily he tries to drape the garment across the back of the chair but it doesn’t seem to have sleeves and it slides down again, it must be some kind of cape and it _really_ is slippery –

Slender fingers slide into the fur and catch it. Armitage drags his gaze upwards and freezes when he meets the eyes of a young woman. In a way she looks familiar, not like he has met her before but rather the kind of recognition when you’re in a foreign country and you encounter a person wearing the traditional garbs of your homeland. Which is odd, he was born here and he can’t pinpoint what makes her look so different either – apart from the fact that she is stunningly beautiful: Her eyes are dark grey like a stormy sea, her dark blonde hair is pulled back and leaves her face free. It’s a pure kind of beauty, unobscured by makeup, like an elf from a fairy tale.

He notices that he’s been gawking at her, open-mouthed, and for some reason...so is she. Staring at him like he’s a dream come true.

Abruptly he lets go of the coat, gets up and all but sleepwalks to his table. When he turns around, her eyes are still on him, so he waves at her, instantly regretting it. Who does that to a stranger? Awkwardly he sits down with his back to her. Soon the orator finishes her speech and dinner is served, but Armitage’s thoughts keep straying to the girl. He tries to focus on the table talk to no avail. From his place he can’t watch her, so occasionally he turns around and sees her digging into a plate of nothing but fish, no side dishes.

After the last dessert bowl is cleared away, he gathers all of his courage to get up and really talk to the mysterious woman, only to find her place deserted. The coat is gone, too. Armitage’s heart sinks. Some people have opened one of the glass doors leading onto the terrace to have a smoke, maybe she has slipped out? She’s not among the smokers, and as he scours the terrace for any sign of her, he must admit to his disappointment that she is nowhere to be found. Inexplicably, he leans across the balustrade, as if she’d fallen into the water. There’s only the pitch black sea.

*

Whenever he can make it, Armitage takes a walk on the beach in the evening. This is the only time he ever feels at peace. It’s like the ocean is calling to him, and he can only soothe the ache in his chest by visiting it as often as possible, but it’s never quite enough, so he has to come back soon.

He can’t swim, ironically. He’s never set a foot into the water. The ocean seduces and scares him at the same time, because deep down he knows, once he gets in he won’t have the strength to make it back to the shore.

When he was a child, his mother used to take him here, both of them glad to escape their dusty old home. His parent’s marriage hadn’t been a happy one, with his father working all the time and his mother being miserably trapped in the role of the housewife. That’s the most prevalent memory he has of her, aside from strolling the beach with her for hours. This seemed to cheer her up a little, although she mostly used to stare wistfully into the distance while Armitage played in the sand.

Nowadays he rarely has the opportunity for an extended walk; his father expects him to work overtime when necessary (and it is often the case). Sometimes he thinks this is how his mother had felt too, the utter despair about the uniformity of her days.

He almost trips over his own feet when he realizes he’s not alone any more. There is a woman walking towards him, a little unsteady on the sand.

It’s her. The girl from the restaurant. All of a sudden she had been there, like she had stepped right out of the ocean. She’s wrapped into the fur she had had with her yesterday. Now Armitage sees that the coat is some kind of shapeless cape that envelopes her petite form completely, its color ranging from pure white to a charcoal grey. He also notices that, despite the cold, she is barefoot.

She stops in front of him, offering him a shy smile.

Unsure whether he should shake her hand, or if that would be too formal, he opts for clasping them behind his back – a solution he disapproves of seconds later.

“Um. Hello”, Armitage says.

“Hello”, the girl echoes, staring at him like she did at the restaurant when he picked up her coat.

“You were at the dinner last night, weren’t you?” he says in an attempt to make small talk. “I’m Armitage, by the way.”

“I’m Rey.”

It seems to be on him to keep this conversation going.

“Aren’t your feet cold?”

She lets out a little laughter that has Armitage’s heart leap in his chest and cocks her head to the side.

“Are yours?”

Confused, Armitage opens his mouth and closes it again.

“Well I’m – I’m wearing shoes”, he answers lamely. Briefly he wonders if Rey has any clothes on at all under that cape.

“I wanted to give you something in return”, she says eagerly and blushes a bit.

“What? F-for what?” Armitage stutters.

“You gave me my fur back!” Her smile is pure adoration.

“I just picked up your coat – that I knocked down, not to mention –”

From somewhere in her fur coat her closed fist comes out and Armitage extends his hand, palm up, so she can drop whatever she’s holding. A small weight makes contact with Armitage’s skin, and when he looks at it, a chill runs up and down his spine that has nothing to do with the frigid air of the early spring evening.

It’s a ring. A simple gold band with a natural pearl, slightly uneven, and he’d still recognize it everywhere: it belongs to his mother.

His mother, who drowned herself in the ocean when he was seven.

“How did you get that?” he whispers, but receives no answer. When he looks up, Rey is gone again; how does she always just vanish? He whips his head around, trying to make out her slender form in the half-dark, but he’s alone on the beach. Only the waves keep him company.

*

At home in his bedroom, Armitage paces restlessly. His thoughts are running wild. Where did Rey get that ring from? He had known it had gone missing. It had always been on his mother’s right hand, therefore he had noticed its absence when she had been laid out at her funeral. No one had thought much about looking for it, probably it had slipped from her finger and the sea had swallowed it. So it was possible that the ring had been washed ashore later and Rey had picked it up – that still didn’t explain how she’d made the connection to him though.

It’s not just the mystery that has captivated him. He yearns to see Rey again like he yearns for the sea, and he hopes so badly that she’ll find him again. He has to know if she feels the same.

Turning the ring over and over in his hand, Armitage thinks of his mother. She had loved the ocean. The ocean, and the fairy tales around it.

One of these stories had been about creatures from the sea, shapeshifters that are seals and can shed their fur to take on human form. Some of the female shapeshifters were forced into marriage by human men who had stolen their pelts, keeping them from turning back into seals. They were confined to a sad life, longing for the ocean they couldn’t return to.

It might be sealskin that Rey wears, and she has been extraordinarily happy and grateful that Armitage gave her fur back to her...he tells himself that this is nonsense, but the thought keeps evolving in his head, and soon his feet are carrying him upstairs to the attic. Maybe the ring isn’t the only thing Rey wants to see reunited with Armitage.

If he is to find what he is looking for, it must be here. Unless his father has thrown it away after his wife’s death, but Armitage is half sure he kept it, as a sick kind of trophy of sorts. Frantically Armitage digs through dusty boxes, until his fingers brush something that is cool and smooth, although soft. Something familiar.

*

Armitage is standing on the beach again, his mother’s fur around his shoulders, and it’s no surprise when a seal emerges from the waves and transforms into Rey.

Pulling her own fur close around herself, Rey steps towards him and puts a hand on his cheek.

“I was hoping you’d find it”, she says triumphantly.

For the first time in his life, he feels like coming home. Overwhelmed by the sense of belonging, he leans down and captures her salty-sweet soft lips in a kiss. The fingers on his cheek thread into his hair as Rey deepens the kiss, sighing softly against him. Seawater is lapping at his toes.

He left his mother’s ring at the bedside table in his room for his father to find and to tell him that he’d figured out what he had done to his mother. And what he would be doing now.

Rey takes his hand and leads him into the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> What was Rey doing at the dinner party? I have absolutely no idea.  
> This is more or less consistent with what I read about Selkie mythology, except I don’t know about the children of Selkies and men being able to shapeshift.  
> Big thanks to Akashne, who brought the prompt for this up, and the rest of the reyux discord for cheering along!
> 
> now with art by the amazing DarkLondon!  
> https://twitter.com/DarkLondonArt/status/1176112200899014656?s=20


End file.
